Conventional conveyor ovens are widely used, among other things, for baking, cooking, and heating of food items such as pizza. The standard oven has an inlet opening and an outlet opening and a conveyor on which the food items designated for baking are placed. However, conventional conveyor ovens are not designed to thaw frozen foods.
Common thawing applications rely on the thermal conduction of heat from the surface to the interior to provide thawing. Due to freshness and product quality constraints, thawing often is done by immersion in water baths that are only slightly above freezing themselves or in refrigerators set to slightly above freezing (e.g., 35° F.-40° F.). Thawing times are often very long. With capacitive heating technologies that heat over the entire volume uniformly, thawing can be performed much more rapidly.
RF capacitive heating is typically used to thaw foods in an ambient environment. However, use of a capacitive RF system in an ambient environment causes the rate at which the surface of a food product thaws to be substantially faster than the rate of thawing at the core of the food product as a result of exposure to the environmental temperature at the surface level but not the core. Accordingly, it may be desirable to achieve an improved conveyor food preparation device capable of thawing a food product evenly from surface to core.